Chapter 1: Cyclical Change, an introduction

Elly van Gelderen

Arizona State University

This chapter provides a general background to the linguistic cycle and cyclical

change. It reviews some of the cycles that we know, the steps that are typical in a

cycle, some differences between various cycles, and examines where the cycle

starts. The chapter also considers a theoretical account. While reviewing the types

of cycles, it sets the stage for the issues discussed in the chapters that follow.

The papers in this collection present an excellent overview of work on cyclical processes

relevant to synchronic and diachronic syntax. Most recent research on the cycle has

focused on the negative cycle and the papers in this volume reflect that interest. As is

obvious from the other papers, some linguists have also started to examine agreement

phenomena, and that involves pronouns as well as auxiliaries and copulas, in the light of

cyclical change. Looking at adpositions, modals, and elements in the left periphery

through a cyclical lens can also provide a new perspective and analysis, both in the

syntax and semantics.

The current volume is based on papers presented during the Workshop on the

Linguistic Cycle that took place at Arizona State University in April of 2008. The

discussions during the workshop were lively and very focused and emphasized the

variation in the cycles. Crucial questions in relation to the linguistic cycle are the

following, with (a) to (d) being descriptive, and (e) and (f) asking why language is the

way it is. The latter kind of question is currently the focus of much minimalist inquiry

(e.g. Chomsky 2005).

(1) a. Which cycles exist and why?

b. Are there typical steps in a cycle?

c. What are the differences between cycles?

d. What are the sources of renewal once a cycle has desemanticized a lexical

item?

e. What insights or explanations can certain theoretical frameworks provide?

f. Why is there cyclical change?

Sections two to seven of this introduction will discuss how the papers contained

in this volume relate to these six questions. In section one, some brief background to

cyclical change is provided first.

1 The linguistic cycle and cyclical change

The Linguistic Cycle is a name for changes where a phrase or word gradually disappears

and is replaced by a new linguistic item. The most well-known cycles involve negatives,

where an initial single negative such as not is reinforced by nothing or replaced by never,

and subjects, where full pronouns are reanalyzed as endings on the verb. The former is

often called Jespersen’s Cycle, after the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, but as van der

Auwera & de Vogelaer (2008) point out, the Egyptologist John Gardiner was earlier in

identifying this process. Clausal markers, demonstratives, aspect markers, and copula

verbs also undergo cycles of internal change followed by external change.

There are early advocates of the view that language change is cyclical, e.g. de

Condillac (1746), Tooke (1786-1805), von Humboldt (1822), and Bopp (1816). The oft-

cited passage in von der Gabelentz (1901: 256) uses `spiral’ to indicate new cycles are

not identical to the old ones:

immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungslinie krümmt sich zurück nach der Seite der Isolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eine annähernd parallele. Darum vergleiche ich sie der Spirale. (von der Gabelentz 1901: 256)1

In the 1950s, Tauli (1958) provides many examples of cyclical change, but apart from

sporadic work, e.g. by Hodge (1970), Greenberg (1978), Givón (1976), and Tauli (1966), 1 "always the same: the development curves back towards isolation, not in the old way, but in a parallel fashion. That's why I compare them to spirals" (my translation, EvG).

not much research had been done up to very recently. The renewed interest in

grammaticalization starting in the 1980s was of course essential to understanding the

linguistic cycle, with work such as Lehmann (1985, 1995), Traugott & Heine (1991), and

others.

Recently, work on the negative cycle has started to appear. For instance, from

June 2008 to May 2009, one-day events on the negative cycle took place in Birmingham

(http://www.lhds.bcu.ac.uk/english/cycles-of-grammaticalization) but other cycles have

not been given as much attention. Cycles of language change have not been studied in

generative linguistics (apart from again the negative cycle), and only sporadically in other

formal frameworks. The workshop in Arizona in April 2008 was an attempt to bring

together linguists who are interested in cyclical change from a variety of frameworks and

contribute to new directions in work on language change.

A partial list of cycles is presented in Table 1 and section 2 outlines which

chapters of the book deal with which change.

Negativenegative argument > negative adverb > negative particle > zeronegative verb > auxiliary > negative > zero

Subject (and Object) Agreement Cycledemonstrative/emphatic > pronoun > agreement > zero

Copula Cycledemonstrative > copula > zeroverb/adposition > copula > zero

Definiteness2 demonstrative > definite article > `Case' > zero

Future and Aspect AuxiliaryA/P > M > T > C

Place/timeN > P > C

Table 1: Examples of Cyclical Change

The examples in Table 1 are of course perfect instances of grammaticalization clines.

Yet, the current literature on grammaticalization has been careful/reluctant in embracing

the cycle. Cyclicity is mentioned only three times in Hopper & Traugott (2003). They

talk about grammaticalization as a “continuously occurring phenomenon” (p. 124) and

point out that the cyclical model is “extremely problematic because it suggests that a

2 The definiteness cycle is not represented in this volume but see Lyons (1999) and van Gelderen (2007).

stage of a language can exist when it is difficult or even impossible to express some

concept” (p. 124). They see renewal not as replacing a weakened lexical item but as

competing with it.

The clines in Table 1 could be adapted to show overlap between the reduced form

and the start of a new cycle. A number of chapters in this volume adopt such an approach

explicitly, e.g. all four chapters in Part I do. The model of Feature Economy that some

authors adopt also accounts for the overlap: once a feature has been reanalysed as

uninterpretable, it becomes a probe and needs new semantic features (more on this in

section six).

Thinking of change as cyclical assumes that change is unidirectional. Some

generative linguists have argued against this unidirectionality, for instance, Newmeyer

(1998: 263-275) and Lightfoot (e.g. 2006: 38). However, Traugott & Dasher (2002: 87)

make the point that the number of real counterexamples to unidirectionality is small and

not systematic. This volume takes that approach.

2 The Cycles discussed in this volume

The cycles typically discussed nowadays affect a minor part of the grammar of a

language, e.g. negation or modality. There are people who look at the shifts in typological

character, e.g. Hodge (1970) and Baker (2001), but most people are more conservative.

For instance, Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 246) argue that there is “more

justification to apply the notion of a linguistics cycle to individual linguistic

developments” rather than to changes from analytic to synthetic and back to analytic. The

papers in this book follow this trend, but section six mentions some ways of looking at

cyclical change from a typological perspective.

Part I in this book contains four chapters on the Negative Cycle. Two typical

sources for negatives, or starting points of cyclical change, are listed in Table 1. They are

full phrases, such as English no thing, and verbal heads, such as Chinese bu `not’ (from a

verb meaning `to die’) and Lewo toko `not’ (from a prohibitive verb, see below). The

majority of the data in the volume deals with the first of these sources. Biberauer

examines negative concord elements in Afrikaans, Tsurska does so in various stages of

Russian, and Hoeksema focuses on the development of a polarity item into a negative

marker in Dutch. The main trend here is “polarity items turning into negative quantifiers

[turning] into adverbial elements” (Hoeksema, this volume).

Van der Auwera mainly examines the phrasal type of the negative cycle,

providing detailed information on phrasal negation from varieties of Dutch. He also adds

data on the verbal/non-phrasal origins of negatives in languages such as the Austronesian

language Lewo. In (2a), toko is a verb but (2b) shows it is also used as negative.

(2) a. Na-kan-ena toko! Lewo

NOM-eat-NOM desist

‘Desist from eating!’

b. Ve a-kan re toko! Lewo

NEG 2SG-eat NEG NEG

‘Don’t eat it!’ (Early 1994: 76; see van der Auwera, this volume)

The three chapters in Part II examine agreement, subject marking, and the left

periphery. They all provide evidence for the intricacies of cycles. The traditional

agreement cycle can be represented as in Table 1, namely as having a

demonstrative/pronominal source. In many languages, the agreement affix resembles the

emphatic pronoun and derives from it. The most well-known case is of course French

subject pronouns. In the history of French, the subject jo `I’ is reanalyzed from emphatic

pronoun to subject pronoun to clitic je and is currently regarded by many (Lambrecht

1981; Zribi-Hertz 1994) as an agreement marker, e.g. (3a) shows an additional emphatic

typically present, (3b) and (3c) show that subject marker is obligatory. The same is true

for the second person and in many dialects even for third person, as in (4).

(3) a. Moi, j’ai vu ça. Colloquial French

me I-have seen that

b. *Je lis et écris Colloquial French

I read and write

c. *Je probablement ai vu ça French

I probably have seen that

(4) Personne il a rien dit Colloquial French

person he has nothing said

`Nobody said anything'. (Zribi-Hertz 1994: 137)

The three chapters in part II add complexity to this picture. Vedovato’s chapter carefully

examines the Italian pronominal paradigm and provides evidence of emphatic pronouns

being reanalyzed as weak pronouns. She then argues that prescriptive forces interfered in

this agreement cycle and stopped the weak pronouns from further development in

standard Italian. Vedovato coined the term `broken cycle’ in her original contribution to

the workshop in May. Kwon’s chapter provides some evidence for the reanalysis of a be-

verb as a pronoun in earlier stages of Russian. This is a change not represented in Table

1, and corroborates Katz (1996) who indicates a possibly similar development in the

history of Hebrew and of Turkish. Poletto’s paper examines the development of Italian e

and sì, topic and focus markers in the left periphery. She also shows that the

grammaticalization cycle can be `broken’, i.e. stopped or changed by other changes going

on in the language.

Part III contains studies on the various cycles that heads such as copulas, adverbs,

modals, auxiliaries, and adpositions take part in. They are of course the prototypical

instances of grammaticalization and follow a path of being reanalyzed as higher, more

abstract elements. Copulas and auxiliaries can also be derived from (phrasal)

demonstratives and in that sense they bridge parts II and III. Copulas have two main

sources, demonstratives and verbs. Lohndal examines these two paths giving a uniform

analysis through Feature Economy. Auxiliaries and prepositions are involved in many

kinds of cyclical change. The most well-known data show them as originating from more

lexical categories. Gergel’s work shows that grammaticalization also affects semantic

structure. His data and Pye’s examine modal and aspectual auxiliaries and their more

adverbial and verbal origins whereas Waters examines the periodic reinforcement of

spatial prepositions through a noun.

3 The steps in a cycle

All papers discuss steps in a particular cycle. Hoeksema outlines four stages: from single

negation, to optionally reinforced, to obligatorily reinforced, to optional again. The last

stage leads back to the initial one but with a new negative. Van der Auwera argues for an

alternative to the Jespersen Cycle, with his account describing “exactly eight possible

trajectories or ‘cycles’”. Both van der Auwera and Biberauer emphasize the repetitive

clause-final negation, as in (5). Its role is not to emphasize, so it cannot be pragmatic

renewal.

(5) Ik heb niets gekregen niet Variety of Dutch

I have nothing received NEG

‘I haven’t received anything.’ (van der Auwera, this volume)

Biberauer argues that “structural height and deficient featural properties can disqualify a

concord element … from being reanalysed as a `real’ negator”. Tsurska examines the

steps from a non-strict Negative Concord language, in which the pre-verbal n-words are

used without the preverbal negative marker to express negation, to a strict Negative

Concord language, where n-words are unable to express sentential negation alone. The

steps she observes can be put in terms of a change in features.

As mentioned above, the steps in the cycles discussed in Part II are less uniform,

especially since some are `interfered’ with. Those in Part III typically involve a reanalysis

in a higher position. Thus, Waters finds nouns being reanalyzed in higher positions, but

in a way that makes use of the expanded PP, and Gergel’s analysis of rather shows

intricate steps from lower adverb to higher modal. A factor that is important in the cycles

is the structural position of the element. As Biberauer and Lohndal show, the element that

would be a candidate for reanalysis might be out of reach.

4 The differences between cycles

Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 244) note that “little is known about the time span

of grammaticalization processes”. Some change is fast, e.g. the verb to auxiliary and

noun to preposition reanalyses. Other change, such as the Chinese verb ba `to grasp’

being reanalysed as object marker, takes much takes longer.

The papers in this volume show that some change is faster than other change and

most changes can be `interrupted’. They also show that the negative cycle is perhaps the

most uniform. Possibly because negation is pragmatically so important, it can be subject

to extremely fast change. For instance, the relatively conservative Athabaskan language

family of North America displays enormous variation (see van Gelderen 2008a). The

archaic varieties, as in (6), show evidence of an incorporated verb whereas more

innovative varieties, as in (7), show renewal.

(6) tendhghaaghetltenęę Lower Tanana

FUT-QUA-NEG-QUA-QUA-1S-CAUSE-ice-NEG

`I won't freeze it solid' (from Kari 1993: 55)

(7) Doo dichin nishłį da Navajo

NEG hungry 1S-be NEG

`I'm not hungry' (Young & Morgan 1987; 350)

Change in agreement markers is uniform since the source is pronominal, as

indicated in Table 1. There is, however, some disagreement as to which pronoun sets the

cycle in motion, so to speak. Givón’s (1976) work suggests that it is the third person but

data from French (see (3)) suggests that it is first person. The object cycle, not discussed

in this volume, shows that object agreement typically starts with animate definite objects.

Markers of mood and modality experience fast change like negatives (see, for

instance, Traugott & Dasher 2002) as do aspect markers (see Brinton 1988). Their source

is typically a more lexical head, but can on occasion be a phrase as well (not indicated in

Table 1). Well-known examples of verbs reanalyzed as auxiliaries can be found as part of

future cycles in Romance, Germanic, and Urdu/Hindi. Well-known cases of Aspect

Cycles involve adverbs incorporated into phrasal verbs and become aspect markers.

5 The sources of renewal

As indicated in Table 1, sources of renewal can be full phrases as well as single lexical

items. The sources are familiar from the vast literature on grammaticalization, e.g. Heine

& Kuteva (2002). A few are listed in Table 2. The reason for these sources is that they

provide new semantic features for what was `grammaticalized away’: person and number

(phi-features) in the case of agreement and copulas, negative features in the case of

negatives, spatial features in the case of prepositions, and so on.

Agreement: Emphatic pronoun/noun

Copula: Demonstative/verb

Modal: Verb/adverb

Negative: Minimizer/Negative DP/Negative AP

Preposition: Noun

Table 2: Examples of Renewal

Once the functional element has lost its semantic and interpretable features, this would be

formulated within a Minimalist framework as becoming a probe looking for an element

to value its features. Some elements are straightforward renewers: demonstratives have

phi-features and can renew agreement and adverbs have temporal or spatial features and

renew prepositions and complementizers.

6 Insights of certain theoretical frameworks

The grammaticalization literature has been a wonderful resource in outlining the clines of

change but less eager to look at the linguistic cycle (see e.g. Hopper & Traugott 2003,

mentioned above). As indicated in section one, one can think of a Minimalist account that

incorporates the clines in Table 1 as well as the necessary renewal.

Starting with Chomsky (1995), the features relevant for and accessible during the

derivation are formal. Formal features can be interpretable (relevant to the semantic

interface) or uninterpretable (only relevant to move elements to certain positions).

Interpretable features are acquired before uninterpretable ones, as argued in Radford

(2000), but are later reinterpreted as uninterpretable, triggering the

functional/grammatical system. The same happens in language change. Changes in

negatives can be explained by arguing that their (initially) semantic features are

reanalyzed as interpretable and then as uninterpretable, as in (8), from van Gelderen

(2008b). Phrases like never have interpretable negative and phi-features that are probed

by a probe in a functional category. Once the phrase is reanalyzed as a head (e.g. Old

English ne ‘not'), another element is required.

(8) Feature Economy

Minimize the interpretable features in the derivation, e.g:

Adjunct Specifier Head affix

semantic > [iF] > [uF] > [uF]

Hicks (2008: 220) characterizes Feature Economy as "establish[ing] dependencies where

possible" and calls this principle Maximize Featural Economy. The same is true of the

subject cycle: the interpretable person (and gender) features of a full pronoun are

reanalyzed as uninterpretable when they become agreement3.

(9) emphatic > full pronoun > head pronoun > agreement

[i-phi] [i-phi] [u-1/2] [i-3] [u-phi]

The clines in Table 1 should therefore be seen as having the renewing element on

the left side of a cline overlap with the item on the right side of the older cline. Feature

Economy requires such a renewal.

3 This is compatible with Chomsky's (1995: 230; 381) views on features: "formal features have semantic correlates and reflect semantic properties (accusative Case and transitivity, for example)".

7 Why is there change and why are there cycles?

Many historical linguists see language change as determined by two kinds of factors. There

are internal factors, such as those instigated by the Economy Principles, or by ‘Ease', as in

Jespersen (1922). These deal mainly with the articulatory ease of pronunciation. Children

acquiring a language use these principles to analyze their input. Principles such as (8) above

and (11) below are examples of that.

There are also external factors for language change such as a need on the part of

speakers to be innovative and creative or conservative. I will discuss the both briefly in this

section since some of the contributions (e.g. Vedovato) mention external factors. External

factors include pragmatic ones. The urge of speakers to be innovative may introduce new,

loosely adjoined elements into the structure. Hagège (1993: 153) uses the term Expressive

Renewal. Speakers may want to be explicit and therefore choose full phrases rather than

single words. One source of new specifiers and words is borrowing. Heine & Kuteva (2005:

3) give examples of wh-interrogatives being expanded to relatives in Tariana under the

influence of Portuguese, where interrogatives and relatives share the same form. The same

pattern occurred in the history of English: wh-pronouns were used in questions but were

later extended to relative contexts under the influence of French (see van Gelderen 2004).

Heine & Kuteva (2005: 73) give many other examples, e.g. Tariana speakers renewing their

evidentials by using Portuguese expressions such as eu vi ‘I saw'.

Another external factor is the `need’ to be conservative and prescriptive. This may

stop change altogether. In the chapters that follow, we will examine some examples. For

now, I will mention stranding and negatives, where prescriptive rules are very strong.

Considering Economy, a principle such as (10) is expected.

(10) Stranding Principle

Move as little as possible.

This principle has been used to explain why speakers in English typically front the DP, as

in (11) and (12), rather than the full PP in (13).

(11) Who did you talk to who?

(12) Quilc men mai get wundren on

‘which men may yet wonder about’

(Genesis & Exodus 3715, Morris 1865, from Denison 1993: 132)

(13) To whom did you talk to whom?

Preposition stranding in English, as in (12), starts in the 13th century (Denison

1993: 125 ff.). It is preferred under (10) and it is estimated that in speech 86% of

prepositions are stranded while in writing only 7% are. This difference between spoken

and written data points towards strong prescriptive pressure. Bullokar's grammar from 1586 contains stranded prepositions, but one century later, most grammarians prescribe against its use. Yáñez-Bouza (2004; 2007) finds that these prescriptivists indeed had an influence on the language. Other

languages may experience prescriptive pressure as well. As chronicled in great depth in

Fleischer (2002), in many varieties of German preposition stranding is frequent though

some describe it as "älter oder umgangssprachlich" (137). It is also common in North-

American varieties of French; see e.g. Roberge & Rosen (1999).

8 Conclusion

If Cycles are real, we need an explanation. This volume hopes to contribute to both the

description of cyclical change and an account (or more than one). It therefore ends with

the description of an experiment to test the psychological reality of cycles in joint work

by Hancock & Bever.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the internal reviewers, as well as Henning Andersen, Aryeh Faltz, David

Ingram. Thanks to Olena Tsurska for helping to organize and think about the workshop

and to Werner Abraham and Terje Lohndal for thinking through some of the issues in this

introduction.

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Practical notes

Since the languages represented in this book vary and also to make it easier to read

chapters on their own, abbreviations are provided in the first (or second) footnote to each

chapter.

Names starting with van or van der or de are listed in Dutch publications under

the letter that follows these connectors but in Belgian publications under v or d. US usage

is mixed. I have kept to the Dutch use (except for Belgian authors) in all chapters except

in that of van der Auwera.

List of Contributors

Johan van der Auwera

Department of Linguistics

Antwerp University

Rodestraat 14 

2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

johan.vanderauwera@ua.ac.be;

Theresa Biberauer

Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages

University of Cambridge

Sidgwick Avenue

Cambridge CB3 9DA, U.K.

mtb23@cam.ac.uk;

Elly van Gelderen

Department of English

Arizona State University

Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA

ellyvangelderen@asu.edu;

Remus Gergel

University of Tübingen

English Department

Wilhelmstr. 50, R. 407

D-72074 Tübingen, Germany

remus.gergel@uni-tuebingen.de;

Roeland Hancock & Thomas G. Bever

Department of Linguistics

University of Arizona

Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

tgb@email.arizona.edu

Jack Hoeksema

Department of Linguistics

University of Groningen

P.O. Box 716

9700 AS Groningen

The Netherlands

j.hoeksema@rug.nl;

Kyongjoon Kwon

Harvard University

kkwon@fas.harvard.edu;

Terje Lohndal

Department of Linguistics

1401 Marie Mount Hall

University of Maryland

College Park, MD 20742

terje@umd.edu

Cecilia Poletto

University of Venice

poletto@unive.it;

Clifton Pye

University of Kansas

Department of Linguistics

The University of Kansas

Lawrence, KS 66045, USA

pyersqr@ku.edu

Olena Tsurska

Department of English

Arizona State University

Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA

olena.tsurska@asu.edu;

Diana Vedovato

University of Padova

Italy

diana.vedovato@unipd.it;

Catherine Waters

Department of Linguistics

University of Toronto

130 St. George Street, room 6076

Toronto, Ont. M5S 3H1

Canada

cathleen.waters@utoronto.ca

Cyclical Change

Table of ContentsChapter 1: IntroductionElly van GelderenArizona State University

Part I Negatives

Chapter 2: Jespersen RecycledJack HoeksemaUniversity of Groningen

Chapter 3: The Jespersen CyclesJohan van der Auwera Antwerp University

Chapter 4: The Negative Cycle in Early and Modern RussianOlena TsurskaArizona State University

Chapter 5: Jespersen Off Course? The Case of Contemporary Afrikaans Negation

Theresa Biberauer Cambridge University

Part II Pronouns, agreement, and topic markers

Chapter 6: Weak Pronouns in Italian: Instances of a Broken Cycle? Diana VedovatoUniversity of Padova

Chapter 7: The Subject Cycle of Pronominal Auxiliaries in Old North RussianKyongjoon Kwon Harvard University

Chapter 8: Two instances of a broken cycle: sentential particles in Old ItalianCecilia PolettoUniversity of Venice

Part III Copulas, auxiliaries, and adpositions

Chapter 9: The Copula CycleTerje LohndalUniversity of Maryland

Chapter 10: RATHER – On a Modal CycleRemus Gergel University of Tübingen

Chapter 11: Cycles of Complementation in the Mayan LanguagesClifton Pye University of Kansas

Chapter 12: Axial Part and Semantic Bleaching in English PrepositionsCatherine WatersUniversity of Toronto

Part IV

Chapter 13: The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental scienceRoeland Hancock & Thomas G. BeverUniversity of Arizona

Index